Echoes from the Edge is an installation that uses film, sound, physical objects you can touch and even smells to evoke people's memories of Digbeth and Highgate. Friction Arts have been collaborating with US artist, Shannon Flattery, to create an interactive exhibition reflecting the voices, thoughts and histories of the residents and workers as the area undergoes it's most significant changes for forty years.

Photo by Nicky Getgood on Flickr

Local Digbeth blogger Nicky Getgood has been effusive with her praise, and I found much to make me agree. The interactive sets are immersive and the audio memories that you find along the trail will bring Birmingham to life. It's really spectacular and on until the 30th May, Thursday to Sundays.

My second art experience also took place in Digbeth, but in the rather more alcoholic atmosphere of the Anchor pub. It was the launch of the new issue of The Eccentric City bills itself as "the World's first dedicated eccentric newspaper" - and I'm sure it is, whatever oddness the Daily Mail et al get up to. It's the work of artist and "eccentric archaeologist" Harry Palmer who edits contributions from around the World, he says it "serves to review, preview, present and promote the nuances of personal and creative pursuits, interests and fascinations".

For someone engaged in any type of research, that's an alarming gap in his digital knowledge. Like looking up rude words in a dictionary, finding mucky pictures on the Internet is just a matter of knowing how things are structured. That and being unafraid of "breaking the Internet" by typing in the wrong thing.

People who don't "get" computers are often a bit scared of anything unexpected happening, if the window they're typing into disappears behind another then they're lost. Books and training courses are okay, if your system is exactly the same as those pictured -- otherwise you're flummoxed. Much training (either face-to-face or self taught) is task-based, meaning it teaches you how to do "something" -- for example type a letter -- usually by following a series of steps. This is fine unless anything goes wrong, and is fine unless you suddenly want to write a novel. It's also true that when you're doing the learning, you're probably not itching to communicate with your bank at that particular moment.

Knowledge of "how to do things" with computers is not as important as the confidence to try to use them to do whatever you want, unafraid of pushing the wrong button, clicking on the wrong icon, or getting frustrated. When I do training with people on any aspect of computers I try to find out what they want to do, and then help them to ask the right questions and try things out while doing it for real. This helps build the confidence as well as the skills -- but what when people don't know what's possible?

What it is is a record of what most streets in the UK looked like at some point last year when the Google Car came past. I had high hopes of being mapped myself, after all I took a photo of the car:

It was not to be (I live in a cul-de-sac so it came past twice) although the camera did catch next door's cat having a snooze:

But to remove 'Mr Blue Sky', and 'The Tamperer' from the playlist at St Andrews as the teams were coming out last night ("to revive recent flagging fortunes" speculated the Telegraph) shows very little understanding of how people are attached to our own bits of history.

ELO's 'Mr Blue Sky' has been a St Andrews staple for years, and has with a loop of 'The Tamperer' (in fact a sample from The Jackson Five's 'Can You Feel It') been clapped along with gusto by fans for over a decade. My personal memories are all based around quickening my step between pub and main stand as the "dum dun dun" bit started up and breaking into sight of the pitch as it reached the bit where the clapping started.

This stuff is important, a while ago I was researching a book based on how songs and football were so linked, and how - for example - mobile DJs have to know that in certain areas playing 'The Liquidator' will do nothing but cause trouble. The taut ska classic has been played a Black Country football grounds for years, with accompanying "earthy" lyrics, it's even been banned on Police advice. While looking I dug up council minutes discussing it, which beats the apostrophe meanderings Cllr Mullaney brought to our attention as a waste of valuable meeting time.

Almost all music gets divided up by these tribal lines, and it's important to be aware of how it affects people. It doesn't take long for a tune to become "our song", even if the "our" is 20,000 football fans.

But as an organisation, you can't force it. Whoever, and I'm expecting it to be quite high-up, decided to change the run-out music just doesn't understand it. That they also decided to pipe a snatch of UB40 through the weedy (they've admitted it's not good enough) PA when we scored shows they have no idea how the fans' minds work.

Jonathan Ross, or @wossy as he is on Twitter is continuing in the vein of Stephen Fry. He's using Twitter just as anyone should - posting his updates himself, just saying what he thinks is interesting at the time and most importantly joining in the conversation. This is of course more difficult for "celebrities" as they will soon get a lot more people talking to them than they could ever listen to or answer, but both Ross and Fry have done it brilliantly. They tend to respond to the "gist" of comments in a way that everyone can feel it's an answer for them, but when the fancy takes them they will respond directly.

Wossy is also providing a valuable service, he's become what I'm referring too as the Celebrity Twitter Police. After a number of high-profile fakes - Tony Benn was reported to be on Twitter, but when asked by our Midlands twittering MP Tom Watson had never heard of it - Jonathan is taking it upon himself to phone up "his mates" and ask if people twittering in their names are really them. He's so far outed an Eddie Izzard and a Jeremy Clarkson as fakes. Unfortunately after explaining what Twitter was to Clarkson, "Jezza" has said he might sign-up for real. So it's not all good.

Like a reformed smoker, the new adopter of technology like Twitter - especially if they've been welcomed with such enthusiasm - wants to get everyone using it. That's great when it includes such obvious wit as Russell Brand, but more dangerously he might push Twitter mainstream by mentioning it on his comeback TV show. With one of the guests being fellow twit Stephen Fry it'd be odd if it doesn't come up (although it's not sure to make the edit).

So will a potential avalanche of new users make Twitter unusable? It might.

Mentioning or not mentioning the war seems to hold a great power over the English, and not just those you'd think of as hooligans -- it's summed up beautifully by this letter from Viz (cribbed in this instance from this fine column by Patrick West on Spiked):

'Could I take this opportunity to remind the UKTV History channel that a lot of history happened before 1939, and a substantial amount of it has also happened since 1945. Not only that, some of it didn't happen in Germany.' A Thackray, Letter to Viz comic, September 2008

But despite the Great Escape and Dambusters film tunes being a feature of both bars before the game and the England Supporters Band's badly-played repertoire, I didn't see any trouble. I also spent an evening in the company of hundreds of German football fans, which was not only trouble-free, but friendly and fun.

I like flying, especially now with airports so full to capacity that you get to walk out to the plane over the tarmac and feel like The Beatles or the Pope. I also really enjoyed overhearing "It looks just like Google maps" from someone looking out of the window as we took off. No doubt Google and the airline have a plan for overlaying adverts for local businesses.

I also like Italy although, at the risk of coming over all Clarkson, I've never understood the European obsession with Snoopy. The dullest character in a fairly dull comic strip, and yet the first bit of graffiti we see beside the train track is the small white hound. He's also on many a sweatshirt to be sold around tourist attractions, with his twin pillar of American marketed cartooniness Bart Simpson (the dullest character in what I'll admit is/was a brilliant show). What Bart and Snoopy are doing here is called 'Pisa Posing' or 'Pushing the Tower' - that is standing in between your mate with a camera and the tower and trying to line yourself up so it looks like you're interacting with the round leany thing.

The odd person pretends to hold it in their hand, some hug, but most either hold it up or push it over (an interesting psychological distinction, anyone want to fund a long research paper into it?). Of course, they're only trying to look as if they're doing it from the angle of their mate taking the photo. Which means the area is filled with people doing crap tai-chi. It looks like the biggest mine convention in Italy. It looks brilliant. I spent a good couple of hours taking pictures of them from the 'wrong' angle, and chuckling manically to myself. There's a Flickr group dedicated to it, as there is these days for everything.

An event city, what does that really mean? And more to the point how do the people who live here benefit? We keep being told that the Tories brought £20M to Brum -- but how much of that will ever get anywhere near improving things for residents? The Rotarians are also estimated to bring £20M despite there being twice as many of them, well I suppose they do drink less.

Let's consider Brum as a big old boozer, like the Yenton, people who live here are the regulars; some drink in the bar (Kingstanding), some drink in the lounge (Moseley) and some only come once a week and use the bowling green and sip half a lemonade all afternoon (er, Sutton). What's this got to do with being an 'events city'?

The events venues are like the function room -- the landlord hires them out to outsiders, they spend money over the bar and help to keep the place going but they might only book at most once a year. For the regulars, all they mean are more noise, the car park being full, the bar staff being busier and sometimes running out of Skol White Top or nuts. It'll also be impossible to get a taxi home, without stepping over people in Ben Shermans who can't handle their ale.

I've never been to a party conference before, so I said yes. It does help that it's only a short bus ride away too.

It's an interesting idea really, one that's already got people talking, at the very least it's always nicer to be asked if you'd like to go to something than not. Unless it's a gathering of people who need to do something about their BO.

Once we (there are apparently ten local bloggers, I know who about 5/6 are I think) were asked then there was a complex system of security to get through to get the required ID. It was tougher than getting a passport -- not least because you needed your passport to fill in the forms. Then you had to get someone to vouch for you, which was hard because it meant explaining why you were going to the Tory conference -- which is as complex as explaining Twitter, without being able to get Boris Johnson to say hello over the interwebs to prove it's a communication tool.

Since then the local history responsibility has been covered a bit by Thinktank, a bit by more local museums such as Soho House -- but that's about to change with a £300,000 grant which BMAG will use to create a new gallery showing the history of Brum from "medieval times to the present day".

A great opportunity. The museum has a wealth of artefacts that would suit this -- many at its collections centre that gets popular but infrequent open days -- and there are some pieces at Thinktank that could do with bringing back into context a little. There are also pieces such as the Baskerville collection at Central Library that it would be great to see in a proper setting.

I've been collecting ideas of what else the museum should have: some have been serious "A retrospective of the old adverts that encouraged families to move from Birmingham into the new towns.", some not so -- but interesting all the same -- "Camp Hill Flyover".

My best times at the old local history museum were when my old granddad would tell me more about (giving the human side) some of the things there. It's a fine line that has to be trod between the kind of interactive, but child-focussed, exhibits seen at Thinktank - and the dry exhibition of artifacts. A local museum has a perfect opportunity to create an experience that not only engages people, but draws on the experience of its potential visitors about the subject.

What price a sort of "wiki-museum" where the public could pop in and add/correct information and even drop off stuff that that they think contributes to the story?

It is stunningly beautiful at first glance, although the view is spoilt by the car park packed with monster trucks that I'm sure Mrs Simpson (of Edward and... fame) didn't have to put up with. The rooms are also fantastic, and a great deal of time and effort has been spent reflecting the style of the building through nice bits of design. A particular favourite touch of mine was the beer mats in the style of the Marion Dorn rugs that once graced the reception. The spiral staircase just begs you to take photos of it, which I did:

But there's something a bit wrong. There are already stains and signs of rust on the roof of the rear terrace, there is the odd bit where the floor titles have worked loosed are in need of repair. Some of the doors are marked with signs obviously made with Microsoft Publisher, blu-tac'd on, saying "staff only". The way to the toilet from the function suite is past a pile of mops and buckets, primed for use with already dirty water in them. Not huge problems, and ones I'd have probably not even noticed if it were not for the 1920s decadent vibe I was trying to buy into.

The Flapper and Firkin (formerly the Longboat) has seen thousands of tiny, sweaty, gigs over the years. It's one of the few places in Birmingham that a new band might be able to get on the bill, supporting a band that are on a national tour. Much needed practise, exposure, and ultimately culture for the city. After the loss of the similar venue The Jug of Ale earlier this year, it might be one blow too many for the local music scene to cope with.

I'm not anti-regeneration, I accept that on the whole the new buildings and facilities in Birmingham over the last ten years have been a good thing. But. If we remove the good stuff along with sweeping away the bad, we will become a souless city.

Before every game of the European Championships this year some uncomfortable looking ex-pro was asked what they thought would happen in the next two hours. Given that they only had to focus on events within around 10,000 square feet of grass, with 23 people on it at any one time, they did -- as ever -- spectacularly poorly.

Weather forecasts have got more reliable over the years, as computing power and simulation models have improved, we can now pretty much trust predictions that don't involve humans. Maybe that's why weathermen (and women) don't become personalities any more -- we only remember them for getting it wrong.

But to try and predict anything that depends on human behaviour, and you're all but stuffed. No simulations can help, you can't foresee trends, and if you're trying to make even educated guesses on the future of the internet, that mass of interconnected humanity, then all I can say is "good luck".

It's normal for people who write about illegal downloading to give all sorts of reasons why the record companies are out of touch, out of time, monolithic and wrong, to say that piracy actually results in more sales not less ­ and then say that, of course, they buy all their music legally from iTunes. I won't, I'll admit that sometimes I've download albums, the odd TV or radio show and once ­ because I was absolutely desperate to watch a film involving penguins yet to reach the UK - a whole film. The film took ages and wasn't worth it, it was obviously recorded on a camcorder, the colours were washed out and someone went out for a wee right during a crucial squawk.

So this week I was expecting to be notified of the first of my "three strikes", with a kindly letter reminding me of the illegality of downloading, advice to keep my wifi connection secure and informing me that Feargal Sharkey was on to us.

The city council have said that whatever the result of English Heritage's attempt to get The Central Library listed, they still intend to knock it down. It's nice to have city planners with vision, but it's important to disagree when we think they're wrong. I do here.

This post is a slightly re-worked version of this one from Birmingham: It's Not Shit, as much as I don't like crossposting I think Josh in the comments there makes an important point about The Birmingham Post being where this debate is taking place. Sorry for the very rough 'artist's impression'.

Quite a few people have raised objections, which the council have decided not listen to, but so far I don't think anyone has voiced an opinion on what should be done instead.

One of the main arguments against keeping the library is that the whole 'paradise' development cuts one side of the city centre off from the other. People do see the divide as an effort to cross, the council is always keen to have events and focus in Centenary Square and these can be sparsely attended on occasion. It's a valid point, but knocking down the library and placing another building in its place (very probably one the public will have no occasion to use) won't solve that.

The council want to be able to see the Town Hall, they think the library cramps it -- but the beauty of the library is similarly cramped by truly horrible buildings.

So, lets open it up -- and knock every bit of Paradise Circus apart from the library down.